Bruised
by Gandalf3213
Summary: Jess can't let anyone see the mess that is his past. Or: the one where Jess is surprised to find an adult actually listening to his problems. A series of connected one-shots. Warnings: past child abuse.
1. Blow-up Bed

_**Luke** : Where'd you get the black eye? _  
_**Jess:** You wouldn't believe it. _

.***.

When Jess was five, he saw a spider inside of the Frosted Flakes box.

He couldn't see it's eyes but he knew it was looking up at him, and he screamed, and he threw the box on the ground. That's when Mom came in. Frankenstein Mom, Jess always thought of her, when she was in those moods, when she would hit first and ask questions later. When she loomed over him, and looked down, and grabbed his arm, and shook.

"We have _one box of cereal._ Do you understand me?"

Jess tried to tell her that he knew there was only one box of cereal, that the one box of cereal was basically the only food in the house, which is why he'd climbed on a chair to climb on the counter to grab it. He tried to tell her that there was a spider, with it's eyes maybe looking at him right now, but Mom had already let him go (that spot on his arm would turn purple later, he knew, he was five but he already knew that) and she got the bowl and the spoon and the milk and she poured.

The spider wasn't in the bowl, but Jess knew it was somewhere in the box, and he cried, and Mom hit him, and kept hitting him, until he ate every last bite.

.***.

"I've got Frosted Flakes," Uncle Luke said.

"That's Gre-e-e-at," Jess said, imitating the cartoon tiger, thinking about the spider.

.***.

When Jess was seven, he refused to take a bath.

They were in a different apartment, this one cheaper and dirtier. Dad was gone, again, and Mom was as good as gone. She brought home an old guy that stank like booze (Jess was seven, but he already knew what booze smelled like) and she'd told Jess to play out in the hallway while she brought him back into her room. When Jess went back in, because the landlord told him that the hallways wasn't for playing, the booze-smelling man was in the kitchen. Jess shuffled, looked at his feet. "Your mom's sleeping, kid," the man said. "But it looks like someone can use a bath."

He gave Jess a piece of bread because, "if you're a messy eater, mine as well be messy before you're clean _."_ He asked Jess about his school day, which Mom and Dad never asked about, ever, and Jess told the man that he got put into the Advanced Reading group and that he was reading _The Wind in the Willows._ The man gave him another piece of bread and said, "Hey, why don't we take that shirt off."

The man tugged the shirt over his head. The man tugged off Jess's pants. The man ushered him into the bathroom, "mine as well be messy before you're clean."

To Mom's credit, she yelled and him and kicked him out and explained to Jess that usually she'd call the cops but there's the coke, you know, but really, Jess, if someone touches you there again you run and scream and yell for help.

Mom, Jess knew that day, _Liz_ , would never be the person he ran to.

.***.

"Hey Jess, you wanna help me fix this tub?"

For a decade, he'd avoided climbing in a tub. He took showers at schools if they lived in an apartment with only a tub. He got girlfriends just so he could shower at their place.

"I'm going out," he told his uncle, and Luke just shook his head like he didn't expect anything else, and Jess left.

He thought about running, and screaming, and yelling for help. He wondered if he even knew how to do that, anymore.

.***.

When Jess was eight, Liz left him for a week. He would go to school and use his key to get back into the apartment. He ate everything in the house, even the olives, even the Frosted Flakes. He drank the milk and then the orange juice and then it was just water, and mostly stale bread.

He had an uncle somewhere up North who could help him, but he didn't remember Uncle Luke's number. He stayed at his friends' houses until their parents asked him, pointedly, if his mom might like him home for dinner, and then he went back into his getting-colder apartment, and he'd look around, and he'd cry, just a little bit, even though he was too big for crying.

The middle of the night was the worst. Even Frankenstein Mom would let Jess cuddle next to her when he got scared. Now it was just him, and blankets, and a teddy he hadn't cared about in years. But he cared about the teddy that week. The teddy was the only thing in the world that knew that Jess was afraid Liz wasn't coming back.

He didn't want to call 9-1-1, even though in school that's what they said you should do. He knew that 9-1-1 would probably decide that Liz wasn't a good mom, and take him away and put him with people who may be okay but would probably be even worse. And they wouldn't be Liz, who made him pancakes on Sundays and made up stories to listen to instead of television and brought him to the library. It wouldn't be his mother who he loved, even though (he was only eight and he knew, he thought) she didn't deserve the desperate, unconditional adoration of a child.

.***.

"I'm going camping with some buddies from high school," Luke said.

"Sounds riveting."

"So, you'll be here. Alone. Unless-I mean, you can come. If you want."

"Yeah, pass."

.***.

Jess was told, when he was thirteen, that he should probably sleep on the floor. In the living room. He didn't particularly like sleeping with his mom anymore (mornings, recently, had become quite embarrassing, though Liz would laugh it off and say, even more embarrassingly, "my big boy") but he preferred sleeping in any bed to sleeping on any floor.

The men had become more frequent since Dad officially walked out (good riddance, like he was ever around anyway, like he ever gave Jess a damn dime.) The men, who sometimes looked at Jess and smiled. Who would offer him whatever they had, acid, weed, coke. Who would beckon, with a hey-there crooked finger, for him to join them in the bedroom.

So, no, Jess didn't like giving up his bed to that. He spent the week finding an older girlfriend, one who also had absent parents but these were absent in that rich, flying-off-to-Paris way. He lost his virginity to her (Sarah, she was almost sixteen, but she had a bed and she had food, food everywhere, and he told her he was fourteen, that he'd started school late.) And he slept in her bed for almost two months.

Liz never asked where he went at night.

.***.

At Luke's, there was a bed, a dumb, blow-up bed.

"I'm not sleeping on the damn floor," Jess said (okay, maybe yelled.) He had very strong feelings about it. He had images of Luke wooing some Stars Hollow single moms, of his blow-up bed being scooted out into the kitchen, down the stairs, into the diner. "I'll sleep outside before I sleep on the floor."

"If you sleep outside, it's the ground. The floor's a step up from that. And, by the way, _it's not the floor._ It's a bed, Jess, come on, it's not like I had notice you were coming. I couldn't go out and buy a whole bed with half a day to plan!"

Jess snorted. Jess tried to keep up the show that he was the tough guy on campus. "Look, if you don't want me around..." He didn't know how to finish that sentence. He was out of places to go.

Luke sighed, took off his stupid backwards cap and crunched it between his hands. He closed his eyes and Jess looked at the ground, knowing that this was his uncle, trying to think of a way to let him down easy. "Okay. Okay. You take my bed tonight, and tomorrow we'll go buy you a bed off the ground. Deal?"

Jess stopped mentally counting his meager pile of money. "Really?"

"Yeah, I need some time on the ground. I hear blow-up beds are good for your back."

"I hear the exact opposite, actually."

Luke pointed a finger at him and Jess flinched. Luke, thank god, didn't notice. "One night, buddy."

"One night," Jess said, climbing into a real bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. He slept long and messy. He sprawled. He slept like someone who didn't worry about what the world would be like when he woke up.

 **.***.**

 **this is just a preliminary chapter to a longer work (plot to come in chapter 2.) every time i get to Jess's stuff on Gilmore Girls, i feel like i wanna rescue this kid. so i'm gonna try.**

 **hope you all like it. remember, reviews are good for the soul.**


	2. Rent

_**Luke:** It was broken yesterday!_

 ** _Jess:_** _I guess it got better._

 _ **Luke** : Last I checked, inanimate objects don't get better._

.***.

After the town hall (okay, after Rory yelled at him, but some things can't be helped-he was always going to care more about pretty girls than about the New England reenactment of the _To Kill a Mockingbird_ climax) Jess started...well, helping.

It started with the toaster. He came in at night well after midnight. He already knew where Luke would be snoring on the couch, remote in hand, ESPN turned down low, waiting for Jess. Which meant he had as much time as he needed to fiddle with the broken Big Toaster.

"So, what's wrong with you, buddy?" Jess asked the toaster. It was too late, and he was too tired, to feel dumb about talking to kitchen appliances. He toggled the knob, then the lever, and the toaster let out a grinding hissing sound. "Your wife left you?" Jess replied, conversationally. "Well, that's no good." He pulled a knife out of his back pocket (yes, of course he had a switchblade in his back pocket. He grew up in a really crummy part of New York) and dug into the left slot, looking for a-yes, there it was, a part of the aluminum, sticking up. He pressed it down gently with the blade of his knife. "She took the kids, too?" Jess said, as the toaster seemed to sigh. "Whatever will you do?"

He tested the toaster with a piece of bread. He spread the bread with peanut butter. He told himself that the food would be there in the morning, and he munched the edges while climbing the staircase. There was Luke, as predicted, _Sports Center_ going through its repetitive motion on the muted screen. Jess threw a blanket over his uncle and took the bed.

.***.

Doing laundry wasn't hard. Jess had done it himself when he lived with Liz. He liked the smell, liked unstained shirts better. It was always frustrating to have to buy detergent rather than milk, eggs, bread. It was more frustrating to have to stand on tip-toe in the hot, cramped room. But he grew, eventually, and he found less sketchy laundomats, eventually.

Anyway, the point was that Jess was no stranger to laundry. His uncle kept his dirty clothes in a bag in the corner of the room. Jess didn't see the point in both of them running the washer (an industrial-sized one, downstairs, also used for cleaning the tablecloths.) So he threw his uncle's in with his, cleaned tables for an hour, ducked into the back room to switch it to the dryer, skipped out on the second half of his shit (Kafka wasn't going to read itself) and folded while looking out the window at the entertainment that was Taylor Dosie ordering Dean around and Dean, a full foot taller, ducking his head submissively.

Maybe Jess could convince Luke to hire Dean. Not because he liked the kid, or anything, but the tips smiling, apple-pie Dean would get (especially from Miss Patty) would definitely outstrip any money Dosie was giving him. And then Dean could take Jess's shifts, and Jess could have time to go out to the dock and do his Calculus homework in peace. He was behind in math, though he'd never admit it to Luke, Rory, anyone. He used to sleep through it in New York, since it was infinitely safer to take a nap in public school math than to nod off in freezing Washington Square park at 2 am. It was even safer than sleeping with Liz and her revolving door of boyfriends.

Yeah, maybe Dean could take his spot. God knows Luke would prefer the town kid to his nephew, the New York greaser.

.***.

"What's this?" Luke asked.

"Breakfast," Jess pointed to different things on the plate, as if speaking to a child, "wheat toast, a veggie omelet, and that red thing there is an apple."

"I can name foods, Jess. But I always eat downstairs with Caesar."

Yeah, pancakes every day, or maybe just a cup of coffee. Jess had gotten up early that morning to cook because he was so over the greasy diner food. He didn't think he'd ever be over food of any kind, but if he kept letting Caesar cook for him, he'd get fat. "This is better. I'll make one for Caesar, too."

"This isn't getting you out of your morning shift," Luke warned. Jess shook his head as he followed his uncle downstairs.

.***.

Jess usually cleaned whenever he knew Luke would be slammed with lunch rush, or flirting with Lorelei Gilmore. There was something highly embarrassing about the thought of being caught with a mop in hand, or a cleaning rag as he wiped down the counter. He washed the dishes, smirking out the window as Dosie supervised Dean's trash collecting (getting Dead hired at the diner had been a non-starter. Luke had been overly suspicious, and Jess had to drop it or risk being put to work on Sundays, which was his only day to stare at his Calculus book and wish the numbers to make sense.)

He was putting the last of the mugs away when Luke came in for his toolset (something wrong with the Gilmore house, again, probably.) "What are you doing?" Luke asked.

Why was Jess's every action worthy of suspicion? "I thought these mugs would make a good art project. Pretty, huh?"

"You going into mosaics now?"

"Well, my chalk art wasn't well received by the uncultured mess that is Stars Hollow."

Luke shrugged. He seemed tired, more tired than usually. Not for the first time, Jess wondered when Luke was going to just..stop putting up with him. "Leave us at least two mugs. I don't care what you do with the rest."

Jess put them all neatly in the cabinet.

.***.

When he came in splattered with oil, normally genial Luke's face turned red. "What, you're going into grand theft auto now?"

Jess looked down at his shirt. "I don't think you need to mess with the oil to jump start a car."

"And you know this criminal information how?"

"TV, Luke come on," usually Jess would try to cover up his small household help. He didn't like being made fun of, and it would ruin his well-cultivated reputation to appear domestic. But he was tired, and his Calculus teacher had told him that he needed to get at least a B on the next test or she couldn't pass her, and Luke's one condition for living here was admission to college, and he was pretty sure they didn't take kids who didn't know how to find the limit of a freaking function. "I wasn't messing with anyone else's car. I was fixing yours."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because you said it was making that weird sound, and I had this cool uncle when I was little who taught me something about fixing cars." Jess blinked. He felt, suddenly, very tired, and he needed to study, and he needed to get up early to study, because he wanted, more than anything, to stay in this small apartment with this surly man who never hit him or hit on him.

Luke's expression softened, infinitesimally. "Okay. Why?"

Jess shrugged. "You seemed busy. I had some extra time. I...you know...I know I don't pay rent or whatever." He blushed deeply. He knew he should be helping out with bills, that he shouldn't let Luke pay him for his time in the diner. Further proof of what an ungrateful asshole he was. "I thought maybe if I help out then we're square."

He didn't look at his uncle. He flinched, badly, when Luke put a finger under his chin. "Hey," his uncle said, "Did Liz make you pay rent?"

Jess shrugged. "Not all the time. When I turned thirteen, she started charging me $200 a month to stay with her."

"What happened when you didn't pay?"

"She'd take my key. I got pretty good at picking locks. And climbing in windows. But she didn't like that," understatement, but Luke didn't need to know all the gory details. Jess could already see how much respect Luke was losing for his sister, how much it killed him to hear her being a less-than-stellar mother. "So sometimes I'd sleep at the school, or I'd stay with friends. It wasn't a big deal, I just had, you know, zero pocket money."

He took his chin out of Luke's hands, backed up a step. "Can I, uh, go take a shower?"

"Yeah," Luke said. "Yeah, go ahead."

When Jess got out, wrapping a towel around himself, he peered around the corner and realized that Luke wasn't in their shared room, or the kitchen, or on the couch. When he got dressed, he went down to the diner-no Luke their either.

Maybe his uncle realized that everyone else in the world charged rent, and he'd been parenting wrong this whole time. Maybe he was going through his bills, adding up what Jess owed him, and no way in hell could Jess pay what the last three months were worth. Maybe Luke was on the phone with Liz right now, talking about what a lousy burden she'd birthed sixteen years ago, and trying to find a way, any way, out of taking care of that burden now.

Whatever it was, Luke would be back eventually to tell Jess what was expected of him. And the more immediate issue was that he was going to fail Calculus. So Jess took out his textbook, flipped to chapter six, and peered at the graphs that plummeted down, down, down, a picture-perfect depiction of rock bottom.

.***.

Jess had fallen asleep by the time Luke got back. He'd gone to Lorelei's, woken her up. She'd brought him tea out on her porch and he'd kept his ranting down, since Rory needed to be at school in the morning. She'd nodded, sympathetic, and sent him back to his apartment with words of wisdom.

Luke nudged his nephew, who had fallen asleep bent in half, covering his textbook with his body. "Hey, Jess. Wake up," Why did he sound so gruff? Probably all the talking. Lorelei always made him so damn wordy.

The dark-haired teen startled upright, scrambling off the couch when he saw it was Luke standing over him. The diner owner noticed that his nephew had changed into a soft-looking T-shirt, boxers. Things to fall asleep in. "We need to talk," Luke said, because it had to be now, before he lost his nerve.

Jess nodded, his head inclining once, looking anywhere but in Luke's face. "So I, um, I don't have the two hundred on me right now, but I've got a bank account I keep for emergencies that I can totally tap into. It won't be what I owe you but I can start paying you back, maybe work some more hours at the diner."

"No, kid-"

"Luke," Jess said, and then took a deep breath, and raised his wide, dark eyes. There were smudgy exhaustion bruises under them. God, it was late. "Uncle Luke, I know I've been a pain in the ass, okay? I know. But I-I can do better, I swear. I'll do all my shifts in the diner and clean up around here and go to class, and I promise I'll get you the money. Please, I-"

Luke put a hand on his nephew's shoulder. He was shaking, fine trembles wracking his small frame. "Hey. You don't need to pay me, okay?" Jess looked at him, and the confusion in the kid's eyes made Luke's heart break. "First of all, you're a minor. I'm supposed to provide you with a place to stay, free of charge. I'm supposed to give you a bed and a roof and food and you're supposed to say _thank you_. I don't know what your mom was doing your whole life, but she was supposed to give you a bed, too."

"I know," Jess said. "I know that Liz was supposed to do that, she's my mom. But you're not my dad. You don't have to give me anything."

"I guess not," Luke said, "But I want to."

Jess shrugged, trying, Luke could see, to reassume his cool demeanor, to pick up the tattered costume and slip back into a role. "Why?"

"Because you deserve these things, Jess. I swear you do."

Luke had actually been pretty happy that Jess wasn't an overly emotional kid. But, he found, he was also pretty happy to put his arms around his nephew as the younger man cried and cried.

 **.***.**

 **so we've decided that these will be one-shot kind of things, dealing with issues that the show never delved into. Maybe tied together by loose threads, but not much more than that. Hope you all like it.**


	3. Dating

_**Jess Mariano** : Are you mad or something?_  
 _ **Rory Gilmore** : I just don't want to be in a fight with Dean._  
 _ **Jess Mariano** : I'm sorry about that. Do you want to push me in a lake?_  
 _ **Rory Gilmore** : Maybe later._

.***.

When Luke started talking about moving, Jess knew this had to have something to do with him. So he went along with the apartment visits and the arguing about fireplaces, he tried to defer to his uncle and keep his head down. Every time Luke asked someone how much something cost (which was every three or four minutes, the man was a walking cash register) Jess would mentally split the number in half. How much was he going to owe his uncle after this little misadventure? Ten thousand dollars? Thirty thousand?

"I just spent one hundred thousand dollars today!" Uncle Luke raged at the end of it, "and it's all your fault!"

Granted, in that situation, the 'your' was Lorelei Gilmore, but Jess couldn't help but think that she was just someone for Luke to take his rage out on without resorting to physical violence (okay, that was unwarranted, Luke had never hit him. Yet.) But still, Jess split the number in half, and fifty thousand dollars was more that he or his mother had ever had Jess's whole life. He'd be paying Luke back for years.

Even though Luke had staunchly refused money, and had looked sad enough each time Jess offered it that Jess had just stopped offering, the younger man was always aware that Luke would be perfectly in his rights to demand payback at any time. What kind of guy took on a parasite for free? So Jess didn't say a word when they apartment hunted, when Luke decided to buy the place next door. He didn't even say a word when Luke took a sledge hammer to the wall, just cringed at the noise, arm flying up automatically to protect his face.

Keep your head down and it hurts less, Jess knew. So he kept his head down, and tried not to wonder why Luke really wanted a bigger apartment. It certainly shouldn't be to comfort his ungrateful nephew.

.***.

"Two bedrooms," Luke would growl every morning when the construction crew traipsed through the small apartment. Jess would nod, thinking that with two bedrooms, another bathroom, he could lock the door all the time and never be afraid that someone would walk in on him when his shirt was off.

"You know what that means, kiddo?" Luke asked, just as Jess was fantasizing about locks again, and Jess, for an instant, thought the man was reading his mind. Then Luke winked at him, and the gesture was so uncharacteristic, reminded him so much of the guys that Liz used to bring by, their sly smiles, their come-hither winks, that Jess realized, suddenly, that two bedrooms meant dating, that Luke would be bringing by women.

Well, women can't be any worse than men, right?

.***.

Jess was re-reading _Howl_ and didn't even notice Rory until she was right on top of him. What was it about Ginsberg ("who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,") that made him want to rip off his skin and seep into the background radiation of all the lives he wasn't living? Ginsberg always made him feel like, even if Stars Hollow didn't work out, there were worse things that could happen, and he was stronger than this place, and he was already broken, all these things at once, and he was still thinking of poetry and feeling of poetry when Rory was in front of him, a pint of ice cream the only thing in her pale hand.

"Your dinner?" he guessed, bundling _Howl_ to the back corner of his mind to be turned over, tonight, in bed, when he couldn't sleep. "Alone tonight?"

"How'd you guess?" Rory asked, sounding actually curious.

"Well, that's too little ice cream to possibly be split between both Gilmore Girls." Jess put his book in his back pocket, kept his hands there, or else he'd reach out and see if Rory's hair was as smooth as it looked. "Where's good ol' Dean-o?"

"Away baseball game."

"And you're not hoo-rahing on the sideline?"

"That's Lane's job," Rory sounded suddenly dark, or wistful, or something.

Jess pushed past it, "And your mom?"

"On a date," Rory said, with absolutely no inflection in her voice.

Jess winced enough for both of them. "That sucks."

Rory gave him a look that was more confused than curious this time. "Why? It's a guy from her night class, not a twenty-five year old this time. They're going to see _Lord of the Rings_ -his idea, not mom's, she tends to laugh at the pointy ears."

"Then we finally have something in common," Jess said, smoothly, "Still, if you need some place to crash if it gets hot and heavy, come knock on my window."

Rory's perplexity had reached a new level. "Mom never brings guys back to our place," she tucked her arms under her armpit. It was cold. "If she stays out, she always goes back to the guy's. Not that I'd mind. I think it's just old habits, you know?"

Not willing to let on just how much he didn't know about having a mother who thought children, toddlers, shouldn't be exposed to an endless parade of sex and strangers and drugs and booze, Jess plastered a smile on his face. "Well, if you need to escape incessant hobbit complaining..."

"I'll find you," Rory finished. She'd never stopped looking puzzled. "Jess-"

But he was already leaving, pausing under a streetlamp, looking into _Howl_ because he was beginning to think he'd figured it out, what Ginsberg meant when he wrote about the men who'd "journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,"

Lonesome, that was the word. Lonely and alone and lonesome.

.***.

And you'd think he'd have learned his lesson but when Luke, stuttering, hand rubbing the back of his neck, told Jess that he was going on a date, don't wait up, Jess had said, "Don't worry, I won't be here when you're back."

"Oh," Luke said, too quickly, "it's not that kind of date."

Jess rolled his eyes, "The apartment is done. We finally have that double bed, all ready to share. Do I need to explain to you why I insisted on the double bed?"

"No, but-"

"Then I won't be here," Jess said, taking _Confederacy of Dunces_ with him, because it was good and thick, because he never minded reading it, even when he was sitting in a gazebo, waiting for someone to come back down the stairs, slip out the door, the signal that it was safe to go home.

.***.

Lorelei found Jess on the bench of the gazebo, huddled into his too-light coat, the dampness in the air doing something to his hair, making it limp and wilted, plastered to his forehead, and at once he looked young, preteen, and Lorelei could see the boy inside the delinquent, and she leaned forward, meaning to brush the hair away from the squeezed-shut eyes, but when her hand was hovering over the boy's face he flinched, hard, and nearly fell off the bench.

Jess grabbed the back of his head, "Ow, fuck ow."

"Hey," Lorelei snapped, from some motherly instinct, "language."

Jess looked up at her with one bleary eye and tugged his coat tighter around his small frame.

Lorelei waited for his reply and, when one didn't seem to be coming, she said, "It's cold."

"I've noticed."

"Your bed is a hundred yards away."

Jess shrugged. He didn't look at her. In the moonlight, the residual light from the lamps, she could see the parts of him that looked like Luke. There, in the end of the nose, the tilt of the chin, and the talklessness, as if he were saving all of his words for when he needed them. "Luke's probably worried."

"He has company," Jess muttered.

Lorelei blinked at how sad that sentence made her, the obvious female attached to the word _company_ , the implications, if Jess had been exiled or had exiled himself from the apartment. She knew it was unfair to think Luke would simply pine for her, until she was ready, but to think of him with some other Stars Hollow single lady, doing the horizontal mambo...no, actually. She preferred not to think about it. "Does he know that Jack Frost is paying us a visit tonight?"

Jess shrugged, pulled his hands inside his sleeves in a gesture that seemed very juvenile. "I'm not cold. You can leave if you are."

 _Or,_ Lorelei could hear (you didn't have to be a master to read between the lines) _you could just leave._ And she thought about it, but instead she sat down on the bench next to Jess. Because, as hokey as it sounded, she didn't know what she would do if this was Rory, sent away to an uncle, sitting in the cold, waiting to go back inside. "Did, um, did Luke tell you not to come home tonight?"

Jess snorted. Then shrugged. "He said he'd have company. I knew the score."

"Yes, but did he tell you the score? Did he say that he and his lady-friend were going to be _occupying the bedroom_ or did he say that, hey, I'm bringing someone back tonight, do you want to meet her?"

She noticed, when Jess looked up at her, that his lips were turning blue. He needed a heavier coat, and Lorelei wondered why men, even amazing, gentle men like Luke, never seemed to notice the glaringly obvious: that Jess was hurting, that his clothes were worn, that he was unraveling at the seams.

Although, to be fair, she hadn't noticed, either, not until this second.

"It might have been more along the lines of the second one," Jess said.

"That's what I thought," Lorelei stood, and motioned until Jess was standing, too. He was as small as her, smaller. Muscled, sure, but drawn and thin. If Jess were a girl, Lorelei would suspect anorexia. With Jess, she suspected neglect, malnutrition, a lack of funds until recently, and then a distaste of the mega-health foods Luke pressed upon everyone at all times. "I want to feed you a cake."

"What?" Jess asked. His hands were fisted in his pockets. He looked like a puppy someone had left out in the rain.

And for the first time, Lorelei thought that maybe that's what Jess was. Not a delinquent, not the bad boyfriend, not the kid smirking in the back of the classroom. Just some kid, who no one had ever wanted, and who was trying the best he could. So Lorelei said, "You want to go see what floosy Luke has back at the apartment?"

Was that the hint of a smile? Just the shadow, but it was a win in Lorelei's book. She led the way out of the dark night and back into the diner.

.***.

After that night, Lorelei could not stop bothering Luke about his nephew. "I'm just asking how much you know about his life with Liz, especially when it comes to her dating."

"I think I preferred it when you wanted to drive him out of town with torches and pitchforks," Luke muttered, staring pointedly the food in his hands, meant for other people. "What do you want me to say? He doesn't talk much."

"Yeah, I gathered," Lorelei said, following him, of course, to his next table. "I'm not asking you to start your 'Who's on First' routine, I'm asking if you've spoken to him, at all, about his life before Stars Hollow."

Luke put the plates in front of his customers, threw the pad on the counter, and pulled Lorelei into the alley the diner shared with Dosie's market. "Why?" He said, letting go of the Gilmore mother's elbow, crossing his arms, looking suddenly, alarmingly, serious. "Why? Have you noticed anything?"

"Have you noticed anything?" Lorelei retorted.

"I asked you first!" But Luke sighed, pulled the cap off his head, began worrying it between his big hands. "It's just-I mean, it's probably nothing, but there was the rent thing, you know about that," he didn't wait for Lorelei to nod, "And he keeps doing it, asking about paying rent, just slipping twenties in my pocket. And then there's the cleaning thing."

"Jess cleans?"

"I mean, I haven't been around a lot of teenage boys-"

"Thank God," Lorelei put in.

"You can't even help yourself, can you?" Luke rolled his eyes, "Anyway, if the rumors are true they're supposed to make their surroundings into pigsties. And Jess cleans constantly. He does laundry, he does dishes, and then he walks out the door. And then there's the flinching."

"That I've noticed," Lorelei said, glad to be contributing something. "Did Liz...I mean, was she strict?"

"I don't know," Luke bit out. "I don't know if she sprinkled Jess with rainbows or beat him with a broomstick because _I didn't know where she lived_ until she called me to say Jess was staying in Stars Hollow."

Of course, at that moment, their alley's entrance was blocked by a tall, thin, teenage boy. "You talking about me?" Jess demanded. And Lorelei, because she was a coward, because she was not blood, because she'd gotten what she wanted, fled.

.***.

"I'm gonna kill her," Luke said, and the way he said it, hand clenching the glass in his hand, eyes hard, voice hard, made Jess think that he actually might.

Which was a problem, because after everything, he still loved his mother. "Don't," Jess sighed. He'd talked a lot today, and his voice was sore, and he reached for the ginger ale and poured it into his glass. They were both drinking ginger ale, and there was an empty plate that used to hold French fries in front of them. They'd been talking ever since Jess saw Luke and Lorelei in the alley, ever since Luke had bodily dragged him inside the diner, held his arm as Luke told Caesar to watch the diner, thrust Jess ahead of him up the stairs and through the door to their apartment.

And, finally, he'd let go, and Jess whirled around, hands moving protectively out and up to his face. "Please," he'd said. "I'm sorry," he'd said.

That was almost an hour ago, and Jess still couldn't believe that Luke hadn't just wailed on him, that instead Luke had gotten the ginger ale out of the fridge and two glasses out of the cabinets and asked him, in a voice so soft, what his life had been like with Liz.

Which is how they got here, to Jess defending the mother who'd always hurt him. "Don't tell anyone. She doesn't belong in jail."

"I beg to differ," Luke said.

Jess sighed, "She's my _mom,_ you know?"

Luke looked like he did know. "She doesn't deserve you. You hear me, Jess? She never fucking deserved you."

He'd never heard his uncle curse before, and Jess gaped at that before he thought to be surprised at the sentiment behind the words. Then he looked down at his hands, embarrassed, "I mean, like I said, she didn't do most of the stuff anyway. If was her boyfriends..."

"That she brought in the house, Jess, don't try to rationalize this."

"I'm not!" Jess said, "I'm not, I knew it was wrong when I was eight, okay? Obviously raping little kids is messed up, but I chose to stay with Liz because it was better than the alternative, and I chose to keep my mouth shut, and I let it keep happening, you know? Like, six months ago it was still happening, and raping little kids is wrong but when it happens to teenagers you gotta start wondering if, you know, they brought it on themselves."

He didn't realize he was crying until he looked up at his uncle and Luke looked like a kaleidoscope portrait. But Jess didn't cry in front of people, so he wiped his eyes with the end of his sleeve and held very still when Luke put a hand on his cheek. "Jess," Luke said, "I need you to believe me when I say that you did not bring it on yourself. You did nothing wrong."

"How do you know?" Jess muttered, "I can't seem to do anything right in this town, so..."

A tear leaked onto Luke's hand, and Luke stood up, and Luke said, "Hey, come here," and held out his arms so that when Jess stood up between them, they were already there for a hug. They stayed like that, hugging, for a while.

"Hey," Luke kept saying, his voice so low, one hand between Jess's shoulder blades, the other gripping Jess's head tight, "Hey, it's gonna be okay. You're okay now. It's gonna be okay."

 **.***.**

 **well there's the house hunting so i guess the next chapter is the car accident.**


End file.
